Victory! Whole Foods’ Coconut Milk Is Now Free of Forced Monkey Labor—No Thanks to Whole Foods

For Immediate Release:
November 13, 2024

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Today, PETA is ending its nearly two-year-long campaign against Whole Foods—no thanks to the company—but to PETA’s own investigators and negotiators, who eliminated forced monkey labor from the grocery giant’s supply chain. PETA notified Whole Foods that endangered pig-tailed macaques—who are illegally kidnapped from the wild, kept chained up, and abusively trained—were being exploited as coconut-picking machines in Thailand and by the supplier of its 365 by Whole Foods Market brand coconut milk. After four damning exposés and video evidence captured at a supplier farm, the company failed to take action, which prompted a massive PETA campaign that included dozens of demonstrations across the U.S., creative advertising campaigns, hundreds of phone calls, a heartfelt plea from singer Morrissey, and e-mails from more than 100,000 concerned consumers.

PETA Asia identified Merit Food Products as the supplier of Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk and found monkey labor during a visit to the company’s third-party supplier farms. Merit Food Products promptly cut ties and will now only source coconuts from its monkey labor–free farms verified by PETA Asia or import third-party coconuts from countries where monkey labor isn’t used to meet demand.

“Whole Foods’ failure to take action to help these monkeys is a disgrace, but PETA got the job done without them,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is celebrating that it has found a way to help some of these animals but won’t rest until the Thai government ends the rot in its coconut industry by making monkey labor illegal.”

PETA is calling on Thai officials to immediately make forced monkey labor illegal and also urging Thai Kitchen, A Taste of Thai, Blue Dragon, and Aroy-D to move their supply chains out of Thailand, where coconut brokers routinely cover up forced monkey labor.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kitsfor people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.